


so we lay in the dark 'cause we've got nothing to say

by Anonymous



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Age Difference, Alternate Universe - Javert Survives, F/M, Implied/Referenced Suicide
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-09-21
Updated: 2014-09-21
Packaged: 2018-02-18 07:37:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,272
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2340386
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's a stranger staying in Cosette's father's room, and Cosette can't keep herself away.</p>
            </blockquote>





	so we lay in the dark 'cause we've got nothing to say

On the first day, Cosette hears a noise coming from her father’s bedroom, and decides to investigate.

Her father has always been secretive, and by now she knows better than to ask questions. She heard him arrive home very late the night before, and there was a great deal of noise, but by the time she woke up, she assumed she had been dreaming. Her father said nothing of it over breakfast that morning, and Cosette told herself that if he looked more tired than normal, it was only her overactive imagination. And why wouldn’t it be? She’s worried about never seeing Marius again, worried about leaving for England, worried about the trouble in the city...

Cosette spends most of the morning sitting in the kitchen, sipping at the tea she could barely drink at breakfast. She stares intently into her teacup, as though it might tell her whether or not her Marius is safe, whether or not her father will follow through on his plan to move them to England. Is that why he had left? Was he making a few last minute arrangements before completely uprooting their lives, separating Marius and Cosette forever? She sighs and gulps down the last of her cold tea, thinking about what life might be like in England. He always seems to know what’s best, Cosette thinks, even if she doesn’t really understand why. Still, she’s a grown woman now, and she’s tired of being pulled around like a child without explanation. And just when she was beginning to enjoy life in Paris, outside of the convent!

She picks up her teacup and tries to take a long sip before remembering the cup was empty. Everything ends, she thinks as the last drop rolls into her mouth.

She stands up from the table, knowing she’ll only make the same mistake again if she stays.

She’s on her way back to her bedroom when she hears the noise -- just something deep and low, like a cough. Her father is gone -- his coat is still missing from the coat rack, at least -- and she should be the only person left in the apartment. It occurs to her that she should be afraid, but she isn’t; she’s too weak, too tired, too emotionally spent to be afraid about this.

She pauses before quietly tiptoeing to her father’s bedroom door. She turns her head so that her ear is close to the door, without actually touching it.

She places one of her hands lightly against the door. “Papa?”

She waits a moment for a response, then continues on toward her bedroom, letting out a sigh. When she gets to her room, she lets herself fall on her bed. She stares at the ceiling, wondering if she’s going mad. She listens to the silence around her, hoping she’ll hear the noise again, but nothing happens.

Her father had told her to stay out of his bedroom the day they moved to the apartment on Rue de l’Homme Armé, and she isn’t anxious to break that rule. He had never had an issue with having Cosette in his bedroom when they were living on Rue Plumet. Had something changed? Perhaps it was because they were moving in only a few days. But they move a lot, Cosette thinks, and this is the first time her father has said any such thing to her.

She shakes her head as if to physically rid herself of the cough she might have imagined, and finds her mind too easily slips back into thoughts about Marius. She lets her thoughts consume her until she thinks she might cry if she spends another second worrying about Marius and whether or not he was involved in any of the fighting the night before, and decides she needs to take her mind off of it somehow.

She rises from her bed and finds one of the bags she had filled before leaving the house on Rue Plumet, and finds a novel her father had given her as a child. She sits on the floor, back against the wall, to read it -- despite the apartment being empty, she enjoys the special kind of  solitude afforded to her in her bedroom.

She tries to focus on the words, but eventually realizes she’s twenty pages in and doesn’t recall anything that’s happen in the past ten.  She’s about to put the book down when she hears another loud cough from her father’s bedroom.

She sets the book down and gets up, brushing the dust from the floor from her dress. The book lays forgotten on the floor as she quietly steps from her room and back to the door to her father’s bedroom. She raps twice, lightly. “Papa?”

Again, there comes no answer.

Cosette squeezes her eyes shut, her hand clasping the door handle, and counts to five before turning it and pushing the door gently open.

Her eyes shoot open as her eyes rest upon the stranger resting in her father’s bed, wearing what she knows to be her father’s nightshirt. He’s looking at her, too, with his brow furrowed and his eyes small and barely visible. Cosette tries to speak, but no sound will come out; she merely stands there, gaping, and with her hand still on the door.

“Close the door,” the stranger snaps. His voice is low and tired, and Cosette obeys, scurrying into the room and shutting the door behind her.

She swears she sees him roll his eyes. “I meant with you on the other side of it,” he mutters, but Cosette thinks she was not supposed to hear that.

The first thing Cosette notices about him is how worn he looks -- his hair is thick and dark and dirty, his whiskers long and in desperate need of a trim, and every inch of his face is contorted into an expression that seems to be half profound annoyance, and half exhausted resignation. She takes note of the dark circles around his eyes and the flush rising in his face.

“I beg your pardon, Monsieur,” she stammers, “I heard a cough and thought it might have been my father.”

“Your father?” The stranger replies, slow and bored. He’s still looking at Cosette, still scowling.

She balls her hands into fists to steel herself. She feels as though her feet have become attached to the floor. “Yes, my father. Monsieur Fauchelevent. You are sleeping in his bed.” She hopes her voice comes off as steady and confident as she intends it to.

The stranger’s expression turns from annoyed to confused for a few short seconds, before he closes his eyes. “Ah, yes,” Cosette hears him say under his breath. “Fauchelevent.”

“Monsieur?”

“What?” The stranger snaps back at her.

“Pardon me,” she stammers again. She wants to turn back toward the door and leave, but finds her feet still rooted to the floor. Instead, she continues on: “I am simply surprised to see a man I do not know in my father’s bed. I apologize for being rude, Monsieur.”

He doesn’t respond.

“My name is Cosette,” she says, for lack of anything else to say.

“Cosette,” the stranger repeats. “And you are his daughter?”

“Yes.”

“How old are you?”

Cosette winces at the blunt question, at his tone lacking anything that approaches politeness or respect. “Sixteen,” she says, forcing herself to keep looking at him and not back down at her feet.

“Sixteen,” he echoes. “Of course.”

The stranger does not volunteer anything, and Cosette finds her hands trembling. She’s unsure of when she had balled up fistfulls of her dress. She remains quiet out of fear that her voice will quaver if she tries to speak.

“Are you going to leave?” He asks after a moment. He isn’t even looking at her anymore, but back up at the ceiling; he sighs, but it’s quiet, and more resigned than annoyed. Cosette gets the distinct impression that he would have been frustrated with her if he still had the will to be.

“Yes,” she says quickly. She has to shake her head a little again, clearing it, before she can remember how to use her feet. “Pardon me, Monsieur.”

She turns back toward the door, and has it half turned before she spins around to look at him again.

“Won’t you tell me your name, Monsieur?”

“No,” he replies flatly.

 

* * *

 

The stranger is on Cosette’s mind for the rest of the day. It would be less bothersome than worrying about Marius if she wasn’t occasionally interrupted by guilt for concerning herself more with that stranger than with her love. She tries to do some needlework, but finds herself making mistakes every few stitches. She seems to prick her finger on the needle after every other stitch. She hasn’t done that since she was a child.

Her father is sitting across from her, reading, though it looks to Cosette as though he’s not absorbing his book any more than Cosette was earlier. He can see his eyes dart over to her, and then toward the hallway to the bedrooms, as though he was afraid that the man in his bed might join them at any time.

After some time, he closes his book, and the noise startles Cosette into pricking her finger again. She drops her needle and shakes her hand, trying to get the sting of the prick away.

“Cosette,” her father says, and his voice is heavy and grave, “there is something I should tell you about.” He’s looking at her with a serious and concerned expression, and Cosette notices the deep, dark circles around his eyes. He looks as though he’s aged ten years overnight.

Cosette thinks again about the man in her father’s bedroom and freezes, praying the guilt doesn’t show on her face. “Yes, papa?”

“The boy you care for -- Marius -- was badly injured during the insurrection,” he says, slowly and steadily. “He is with his grandfather right now, but they are unsure if he will recover.”

Cosette blanches. She can hear her blood rushing in her ears and she feels dizzy and lost; she tries to look at her father but find she cannot focus on him. It sounds like he’s still talking, but Cosette can’t make out the words.

She was right to have been worried this whole time, then. Her love is hurt, perhaps dying, perhaps already dead, and she has spent the afternoon thinking of another man, a man she does not even know! Some small part of her tries to remind her that she has not been unfaithful, that it isn’t unreasonable for her to have a conversation with a guest in her house, but her head keeps spinning all the same.

She tries to remember the last thing she said to him, in the gardens at Rue Plumet what felt like years ago, and finds she cannot. She thinks back to the letter she wrote for him, and can’t remember whether or not she had told him she loved him in that letter. What had driven him to get involved in the insurrection? Perhaps if Cosette had talked to her father about Marius coming with them to England, perhaps if Cosette had told him how much he meant to her, he might not have been hurt.

She feels a hand on her shoulder, and realizes she has been weeping; her elbows are resting on her knees and her head in her hands. She looks up to see her father standing over her.

“Do not mourn him yet, my child,” he says tenderly, “there is a chance he will recover. They do not know for certain.”

Cosette nods, sniffing and willing herself not to cry.

“You may see him in a few days if the doctors permit it,” her father continues.

Cosette merely nods again, grateful for the steadying hand still on her shoulder.

She stays like that a few minutes, trying to control her breathing and shaking. Eventually, she’s able to stop crying, but when she looks up, she realizes her father has left. She doesn’t remember him leaving or feeling him remove his hand from her shoulder. But he’s not in the room anymore.

She feels herself beginning to shake again, her eyes welling up, before she hears her father’s voice. It’s distant and muffled -- clearly not directed toward her. She holds her breath, covering her mouth and nose with one hand, trying to quiet her breathing so that she might hear what her father is saying.

It’s still no use; she can hear his voice, but can’t make out the words. He must be trying to be quiet, trying not to let Cosette overhear.

She gets up from the chair and walks, as quietly as she can, down the hallway and into her bedroom. She finds the wall she had been sitting against earlier, and knocks the book she had been reading to the side. She kneels down on the floor, pressing her head to the wall.

“You have to talk about it,” Cosette hears her father say. The words sound forced, and Cosette is startled by the lack of warmth in them; his voice couldn’t have been more different than it was when he had been talking to her.

“I don’t,” the stranger replies. Cosette can’t explain why she’s relieved to hear him sounding just as exhausted while talking to her father as he had been while talking to her. “Just let me go home.”

“I can’t.”

“I’m not going to -- Valjean, really --”

“I told you never to use that name in this house,” she can hear her father hiss. She’s again struck by the lack of warmth in his voice, and she can feel her hands starting to shake like they had been earlier. She had never heard him talk to anyone that way. “Don’t ever say it again, not while my daughter is here. And I cannot just -- what do you intend to do? You say you won’t try to -- will you go to work? As if nothing has happened? You can’t try to -- people don’t go to work after trying to kill themselves.” 

Cosette’s head starts spinning again, and her shaking hands have gone numb. She gets up from her spot near the wall to lay down on her bed, pressing a pillow over her face. This stranger, then, had tried to kill himself?

And why did her father seem so angry about that?

She supposed she could see why he would be angry, but to be cold toward him?

Her father said the stranger had tried to kill himself last night -- the same night Marius was hurt. Was Marius with the stranger? How had her father known about both this stranger and Marius?

She realizes she’s crying again when she feels the pillow pressed against her face grow wet. She bites the pillow, fighting the urge to scream. She has no idea what’s going on -- her father hadn’t really told her anything except that Marius was hurt. She didn't understand anything, her father had given her more questions than answers, and everything was changing around her -- why couldn’t they be back at Rue Plumet? Things were so much simpler back there, before any of this.

She pictures Marius in the garden there, that time he had kissed her, that first time. She imagines her lips against his, his hands holding her gently, imagines slowly pulling her head back to see the expression on his face after the kiss. But when she looks at him, he is hurt -- shot, covered in blood, barely standing, and she just starts crying even more. She pictures him falling, laying in the garden, blood pooling around him --

“Cosette?”

Cosette pulls the pillow down from her face to see her father standing in the doorway to her bedroom. “Do you need anything?”

The softness in his voice was back, and Cosette feels guilty for being frightened earlier. She tries to focus on the concern in his face instead of the images in her mind. She shakes her head, slowly and deliberately, once again willing herself not to cry.

Her father walks further into her bedroom, and sits on the edge of her bed. She uses all her energy to sit up and fall onto his shoulder, wrapping her arms around him and letting herself cry, letting go of any attempt to keep quiet. Her father wraps one of his arms around her too, pressing her head toward him.

“Everything will work out,” her father promises.

Cosette just hugs him tighter, and cries and cries and cries.

 

* * *

 

“I need to speak with M. Gillenormand,” Cosette’s father tells her the next day.

Cosette jumps. Her eyes widen, and it takes all of her focus to nod.

“I think it’s best I go alone,” he continues. “I won’t be long.”

Cosette nods again. Her mind jumps to panic -- she doesn’t want to be alone right now, not with her thoughts of Marius hurt and of this stranger trying to hurt himself. But her father leaving to talk to Marius's grandfather -- she needs news from him, needs to know how Marius is doing. She knows why her father doesn't want her to accompany him, but still...

She thinks about how she will pass the time without her father there, then thinks back to the stranger. She knows she should leave him alone -- if her father wasn't very kind to this man, there was probably a reason why. Not only that, but he had made it fairly clear he didn't want Cosette around. 

But there was something about that man...

When her father leaves, Cosette finds herself, almost unwillingly, once again tip-toeing toward the door to her father's bedroom.

She knocks gently before pushing the door open. “Monsieur?”

The stranger is still there. He looks better than he had yesterday, Cosette thinks -- his face looks fuller and less pale. The dark circles around his eyes are still there, though less pronounced. His eyes -- dark and round and small -- seemed at least a little brighter.

“Leave me alone,” he says. His voice sounds stronger, and Cosette feels the relief wash over her.

“Are you feeling better?”

“Before you came in here, perhaps.”

Cosette can’t help from smiling a little -- the more he spoke, the clearer it was that he was feeling better than he had been the day before. She studies his eyes, as if they would tell her whether his comment was serious or a playful joke.

She realizes she is staring and squeezes her eyes shut for lack of anything better to do with them, and when she opens them again she thinks she sees the corners of the stranger’s mouth twitch -- but she can’t be certain.

“Do you want to talk to me?” She asks, balling up her hands into fists like she had done the day before in attempt to give her strength.

“No.”

“How do you know my father?”

The stranger sighs. “You should ask him.”

“I can’t. He doesn’t think I know you’re here.”

“I know.”

Cosette can’t tear her eyes away from the stranger this time, and she is certain that he had -- even if it was very briefly -- smiled.

“Did you really try to --” she starts.

“What will it take for you to leave me alone?”

The brief humour is gone from his voice, and Cosette squeezes her eyes shut again, mad at herself for misstepping. She shouldn’t have asked that, he's mad at her now, she could see in his eyes that he --

“My name is Javert.”

Cosette looks up.

“You wanted to know my name, yes? It’s Javert. Will you leave me alone now?”

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> I'm trying something new here with the way I'm writing and I don't write Cosette POV very often but it's very fun?


End file.
